ou: tamarack swamps, and
spruce thickets, and windfalls, and all kinds of misery. Presently we
came out on a bare rock on the burned hillside, and there, across a
ravine, we could see the animal lying down, just below the trunk of a
big dead spruce that had fallen. The beast's head and neck were hidden
by some bushes, but the fore shoulder and side were in clear view, about
two hundred and fifty yards away. McDonald seemed to be inclined to
think that it was a bull and that I ought to shoot. So I shot, and
knocked splinters out of the spruce log. We could see them fly. The
animal got up quickly, and looked at us for a moment, shaking her long
ears; then the huge unmitigated cow vamoosed into the brush. McDonald
remarked that it was 'a varra fortunate shot, almaist providaintial!'
And so it was; for if it had gone six inches lower, and the news gotten
out at Bathurst, it would have cost me a fine of two hundred dollars."

"Ye did weel, Dud," puffed McLeod; "varra weel indeed--for the coo!"

"After that," continued Hemenway, "of course my nerve was a little
shaken, and we went back to the main camp on the river, to rest over
Sunday. That was all right, wasn't it, Mac!"

"Aye!" replied McLeod, who was a strict member of the Presbyterian
church at Moncton. "That was surely a varra safe thing to do. Even a
hunter, I'm thinkin', wouldna like to be breakin' twa commandments in
the ane day--the foorth and the saxth!"

"Perhaps not. It's enough to break one, as you do once a fortnight when
you run your train into Riviere du Loup Sunday morning. How's that, you
old Calvinist?"

"Dudley, ma son," said the engineer, "dinna airgue a point that ye canna
understond. There's guid an' suffeecient reasons for the train. But
ye'll ne'er be claimin' that moose huntin' is a wark o' necessity or
maircy?"

"No, no, of course not; but then, you see, barring Sundays, we felt that
it was necessary to do all we could to get a moose, just for the sake of
our reputations. Billy, the cook, was particularly strong about it. He
said that an old woman in Bathurst, a kind of fortune teller, had told
him that he was going to have 'la bonne chance' on this trip. He wanted
to try his own mouth at 'calling.' He had never really done it before.
But he had been practicing all winter in imitation of a tame cow moose
that Johnny Moreau had, and he thought he could make the sound 'b'en
bon.' So he got the birch-bark horn and gave us a sample of his skill.